Considering “Pick Me” as a song, I did not have much hope for this portion of the episode. However, just when I was losing interest, Jang Geun Suk decided to get all ‘Dance Moms‘* and did the choreography along with the contestants.

*Editor’s Note: I almost corrected this to lower-case and non-plural until I discovered that it is an actual television show. Burn America to the ground.

#Blessed

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The end of their performance heralded in the inevitable: the actual competition beginning. In addition to three girls (Kyungha, Hayun, Hyosun) leaving the competition of their own accord, it was mentioned that 37 contestants will be eliminated following the next challenge.

The ensuing group challenge and the preparations for the group performances is really where this episode shines. See, assigning songs to the various groups would be far too basic for ‘Produce 101’, so Mnet decided to have contestants race for flags representing various girl group debut songs. In the ensuing mess, Lee Haein and Kim Nayoung made Way’s Girls proud by wrestling each other for a flag.

Much to my disappointment, however, it didn’t result in a all-out girl-on-girl wrestling brawl and was consequently anti-climactic.

Later in the episode, Somi was sent to the hospital after complaining of stomach pain, but she returned in time to perform “Into The New World” with her group. Said group, dubbed ‘The Avengers’ by their fellow competitors, were assumed to be unbeatable because they were a dream team of Somi, Chanmi, and the girls from DIA. For a while during their performance, everything seemed to being going well…

…and then Chanmi killed a goat or something.

As far as the other performances are concerned, ‘Da Mansae’ (the first group performing “Into The New World”) was impressive with both their vocals and execution of the choreo.

The two groups performing A Pink were adequate, but ultimately forgettable…

…and the English rapping in the performances of “Fire” were about as cringy as expected.

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Next week’s episode will have more of the group performances and then a glorious mass elimination to hopefully create an absolute mess.